Proofpoint recently identified a SugarGh0st RAT campaign targeting organizations in the United States involved in artificial intelligence efforts, including those in academia, private industry, and government service.
Proofpoint tracks the cluster responsible for this activity as UNK_SweetSpecter. SugarGh0st RAT is a remote access trojan, and is a customized variant of Gh0stRAT, an older commodity trojan typically used by Chinese-speaking threat actors. SugarGh0st RAT has been historically used to target users in Central and East Asia, as first reported by Cisco Talos in November 2023.
Read more…
Source: ProofPoint
Related:
- Mexican drug cartel hacked cameras and phones to spy on FBI and identify witnesses
July 3, 2025
The “El Chapo” Mexican drug cartel snooped on FBI personnel through hacked cameras, and listened in on their phone calls to identify and kill potential witnesses, the US Department of Justice has said. And seven years on, the Bureau’s defenses against this kind of surveillance are still inadequate. The findings came to light in a June ...
- Iran-linked hackers threaten to release Trump aides’ emails
July 1, 2025
Iran-linked hackers have threatened to disclose more emails stolen from U.S. President Donald Trump’s circle, after distributing a prior batch to the media ahead of the 2024 U.S. election. In online chats with Reuters on Sunday and Monday, the hackers, who go by the pseudonym Robert, said they had roughly 100 gigabytes of emails from the ...
- Hackers hijacked hundreds of devices in an outlandish intel campaign aimed at US and Asian targets
June 29, 2025
A recently disclosed cyber espionage operation, dubbed LapDogs, has drawn scrutiny following revelations from SecurityScorecard’s Strike Team. The operation, believed to be conducted by China-aligned threat actors, has quietly infiltrated over 1,000 devices across the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. What makes this campaign distinctive is its use of hijacked SOHO routers ...
- What’s in an ASP? Creative Phishing Attack on Prominent Academics and Critics of Russia
June 18, 2025
In cooperation with external partners, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) observed a Russia state-sponsored cyber threat actor impersonating the U.S. Department of State. From at least April through early June 2025, this actor targeted prominent academics and critics of Russia, often using extensive rapport building and tailored lures to convince the target to set up application ...
- Hackers take aim at Washington Post journalists in an apparent ‘targeted’ cyberattack
June 15, 2025
Hackers have tried to break into the email accounts of a select number of Washington Post journalists, according to an internal Washington Post memo obtained by CNN. The Post discovered the “possible targeted” hack of its email system last Thursday, prompting the newspaper to reset login credentials for all its employees on Friday, Washington Post Executive ...
- Apple fixes new iPhone zero-day bug used in Paragon spyware hacks
June 12, 2025
Researchers revealed on Thursday that two European journalists had their iPhones hacked with spyware made by Paragon. Apple says it has fixed the bug that was used to hack their phones. The Citizen Lab wrote in its report, shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, that Apple had told its researchers that the flaw exploited in ...